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I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Tell
Stories
Part
Trying
Haiti
People
Chorus
Complexes
Complex
Happy

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
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We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.
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I was able to not fold and go in a corner because I had my writing as therapy, but also as my tool for struggle.
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I am very timid about speaking for the collective. I can say what I see, I can say what I've heard, I can say what I feel, but I can't speak for - no one can speak for - 10 million people, and it takes away something from them if you make yourself their voice.
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.
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We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.
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America's relationship with Haiti has always been very complicated. I often say to people, Before we came to America, America came to us in the form of the American occupation from 1915 to 1934.
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There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.
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That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.
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We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.
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There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.
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I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.
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In the 1980s, when people were just beginning to talk about AIDS, there were just a few categories of those who were at high risk: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. We were the only ones identified by nationality.
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I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to
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People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.
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I see the sharp inequality between how Haitian and Cuban refugees are treated in Florida. Both groups come here because their lives are equally desperate. But on arrival, the Haitians are incarcerated, and some are immediately repatriated, whereas Cubans get to stay and are eligible for citizenship.
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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